


Reflections

by celeste9



Category: Firefly
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Hair, Mirrors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-16
Updated: 2012-09-16
Packaged: 2017-11-14 08:38:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/513359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celeste9/pseuds/celeste9
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kaylee loved to watch Inara.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reflections

**Author's Note:**

> For Kink Bingo, 'mirrors/doubles'.

One of Kaylee’s favorite things was watching Inara get ready. She liked to sit next to her and watch their reflections in the mirror, sit and watch Inara make herself impossibly more beautiful.

Kaylee was fascinated by it all. The lotions that made Inara’s skin so soft and seemed to give her almost a glow, the little vials of sweet-smelling fragrances, the numerous brushes Inara used to paint her face, to make her lips so red and her eyelashes even longer, to accentuate her lovely eyes and good bone structure. Watching Inara make herself (more) beautiful was like watching a ritual that Kaylee felt privileged to be part of.

Usually Kaylee came in and started chattering, telling Inara about how Mal did this or Simon did that, but a lot of the time eventually they would fall into silence. The nice kind of silence, between people who are comfortable and don’t need to fill up the room with noise all the time. And Kaylee would watch. She would watch and wonder what it would be like to be Inara, to know how to treat herself like she was a painting in one of those museums Simon talked about, to actually _look_ like she was one of those paintings.

Sometimes Kaylee liked to stand in front of the mirror and hold Inara’s dresses against herself, imagining what it would be like to wear them. To feel that silk caressing her skin, to glide across the floor with those skirts swirling around her ankles. She thought that she would never hold a candle to Inara, not even in her fanciest dress. She would never match Inara’s grace and no dress could ever give her Inara’s beauty, could ever cling to her like it would to Inara’s tall, slim body and generous curves.

Sometimes, next to Inara, Kaylee felt ugly and ungainly, felt like a cheap toy thrown in with an expensive, perfect china doll, the kind of doll Kaylee had never been able to own. Inara was easily the most beautiful woman Kaylee had ever seen. Compared with Inara’s smooth skin and thick dark hair, Kaylee wasn’t anything.

But that was okay. It wasn’t like Kaylee spent all of her time moping about it. And Inara liked her fine just the way she was.

While the two of them sat in front of the mirror, Inara put down the perfume she’d been dabbing behind her ears and turned to Kaylee, reaching her hands out to push Kaylee’s hair back from her face. “Let me fix your hair, mei mei.”

Kaylee loved when Inara offered to do her hair. When she was with Inara was really the only time she ever felt like she could be girly, but it was more than that. It was like being a little girl again, sitting still while her mama brushed her hair.

Except not really. With Inara it was different. Still comforting but more... intimate. Her mama surely never touched her like Inara did.

Inara brushed through Kaylee’s hair in long, gentle strokes, laying the wavy strands of it against Kaylee’s shoulders. Kaylee looked in the mirror, watched Inara’s brush strokes and then watched her set the brush down and replace it with her fingers. Inara had long, elegant fingers, just like the rest of her, and Kaylee loved the sight of them carefully combing through her hair. She loved the feel of those fingers moving softly in her hair and against her scalp.

Inara leaned in to press a kiss against Kaylee’s temple, lightly and sweetly, and Kaylee’s eyes drifted closed for a second. She looked at them both in the mirror, looked at her own contented expression and at the tenderness on Inara’s face and thought that maybe they looked exactly right.

She smiled at them both, at their faces in the mirror, because she knew Inara loved her smile. She knew Inara loved her brightness like Kaylee loved Inara’s warmth.She looked at Inara’s slender hand on her shoulder and at her own smiling face and thought maybe she felt beautiful after all.

_**End** _


End file.
